From to build a fire (fiction)
by jack london
the fire was a success. he was safe. he remembered the advice of the old-timer on
sulphur creek, and smiled. the old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law
that no man must travel alone in the klondike after fifty below. well, here he was; he
had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. those old-timers were
rather womanish, some of them, he thought. all a man had to do was to keep his head,
and he was all right. any man who was a man could travel alone. but it was
surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing. and he had not
thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time. lifeless they were, for he could
scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his
body and from him. when he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether or not he
had hold of it. the wires were pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.
all of which counted for little. there was the fire, snapping and crackling and
promising life with every dancing flame. he started to untie his moccasins. they were
coated with ice; the thick german socks were like sheaths of iron halfway to the knees;
and the moccasin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as if by fire. for
a moment he tugged with his numb fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his
sheath knife.
but before he could cut the strings, it happened. it was his own fault or, rather,
his mistake. he should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. he should have
built it in the open. but it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop
them directly on the fire. now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight
of snow on its boughs. no wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully
freighted. each time he had pulled a twig he had given a slight agitation to the tree
–an agitation scarcely noticeable, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient
to bring about the disaster. high up in the tree one bough capsized it load of snow.
this fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. this process continued, spreading out
and involving the whole tree. it grew like an avalanche, and it descended without
warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out!
the man was shocked. it was as though he had just heard his own sentence of
death. for a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. then he
grew very calm. perhaps the old-timer on sulphur creek was right. no man should
travel alone in the klondike after fifty below. if he had only had a trail mate he would
have been in no danger now. the trail mate could have built the fire. well, it was up to
him to build the fire over again, and this second time there must be no failure. even if
he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes. his feet must be badly frozen by
now, and there would be some time before the second fire was ready. find the metephores and similes
Answers: 1
English, 21.06.2019 23:10
Question 5 the poet protests against child labor and condemns the harm done to children exploited in this practice. yet in lines 23-24, the child narrator writes that “tho' the morning was cold, tom was happy and warm / so if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.” this is an ironic expression of the narrator’s
Answers: 1
English, 22.06.2019 02:50
Match the definition to the word for a better understanding of the paragraph. 1 money does not buy happiness or security. 2john ringling, one of the five brothers of the ringling brothers circus, started out in 1884 with a trained horse and a performing bear. 3for over forty years, he worked hard at the family enterprise, bought up smaller circuses, and imported new acts. 4in the 1920s, he was rated as one of the world's wealthiest men and owned every sizable circus in the country. 5over 5,000 people were on his payroll, and over 240 railroad cars were in his retinue each time the circus moved. 6at the time of his death, however, he was a nervous, unhappy man; he was also bankrupt and beset by lawsuits. 7his carefully built circus empire passed into alien hands. 8all those years of work had turned to dust. 1. business organization alien 2. group beset 3. without funds to pay debts retinue 4. troubled or harassed enterprise 5. strange; belonging to another person, place, country, or thing bankrupt
Answers: 2
English, 22.06.2019 11:30
Where should the quotation below be placed to further develop the paragraph? one greek scholar states, “the influence of the olympians on everyday culture is equal to that of shakespeare and the bible” (thomas 87).
Answers: 3
From to build a fire (fiction)
by jack london
the fire was a success. he was s...
by jack london
the fire was a success. he was s...
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